Czech Republic: Romani man risks life to save infant threatened at knifepoint

Táborský deník (Tábor Daily) reports that Stanislav Kováč of the IMPULS Tábor civic association recently displayed great courage when he stood up to a drunken man threatening adults and children with a long knife in Husovo Park in the town of Tábor. The drunken man walked up to Irena Dzurková as she was sitting on a bench with her daughter and younger brother and asked her for a cigarette.

Dzurková gave the man a cigarette, but that was just the beginning. He pulled out a long knife and began to wave it in the faces of the group on the bench.  

"I was startled and the children began crying. They saw Standa Kováč and ran over to hide behind him. I sought safety with him as well," Dzurková told the Táborský deník.

The troublemaker then moved to the next bench where a mother was sitting with her one-and-a-half-year-old infant. Kováč intervened at that point.

"I saw other people were in danger. I stepped in front of the mother to make it impossible for there to be contact between them," he told the Táborský deník.

In the meantime Dzurková called the police, who arrived almost immediately. "The officers did a brilliant job and really lived up to their motto of ‘to help and to serve’," Dzurková told the daily.

Kováč, who is now considered a hero, modestly added the following:  "In the first place I wasn’t even aware of being afraid for my own life. The primary thing for me was that the children were endangered."